AMERICANS FINALLY RECOGNIZE KING KONG WANTS TO DEVOUR THEM

AFTER 6 YEARS OF KING GEORGE W. REIGN, AMERICANS REALIZE RIGGED ELECTIONS ARE TRASHING OUR DEMOCRACY AND ARE FLUSHING JOE AND JANE AMERICA STRAIGHTAWAY INTO THE SEWER OF LACK OF OPPORTUNITY, IF NOT OUTRIGHT POVERTY.

According to the Zogby polls, a whopping 92% of Americans demand the right to see ballots counted. Hell, I vote in Texas so you can be sure I will vote absentee. LS

Found on Raw Story.com

Excerpts:

A new Zogby poll to be released on Tuesday will reveal that 92% of Americans, spanning every party and democraphic group, believe that the public has the right to view and verify the counting of votes, RAW STORY has learned.

When offered a choice between "Citizens have the right to view and obtain information about how election officials count votes" or "Citizens do not have the right to view and obtain information about how elections officials count votes," 92% of those polled agreed with the first statement. Only 6% agreed with the second, while 2% were unsure.

The issue of transparency has become particularly important due to the use of electronic voting systems, most of which employ secret, proprietary code and do not allow public inspection.

RAW STORY PIECE ON ACCOUNTABILITY IN ELECTIONS HERE

ROVE'S FEAR CARD HAS RUN OUT OF STEAM?

Let's hope so, though there are the 20% of greedy and obscenely wealthy, religious fundamentalist extremists, or really uninformed - no - truly stupid - folks who will allow themselves to be scared over and over and over. Rove is counting on them.

Wonderful piece by Mr. Frank Rich of the New York Times who essentially unmasks Rove.

Found on truthout.org

Excerpts:

The results are in for the White House's latest effort to exploit terrorism for political gain: the era of Americans' fearing fear itself is over.

In each poll released since the foiling of the trans-Atlantic terror plot - Gallup, Newsweek, CBS, Zogby, Pew - George W. Bush's approval rating remains stuck in the 30's, just as it has been with little letup in the year since Katrina stripped the last remaining fig leaf of credibility from his presidency. While the new Middle East promised by Condi Rice remains a delusion, the death rattle of the domestic political order we've lived with since 9/11 can be found everywhere: in Americans' unhysterical reaction to the terror plot, in politicians' and pundits' hysterical overreaction to Joe Lieberman's defeat in Connecticut, even in the ho-hum box-office reaction to Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center."

It's not as if the White House didn't pull out all the stops to milk the terror plot to further its politics of fear. One self-congratulatory presidential photo op was held at the National Counterterrorism Center, a dead ringer for the set in "24." But Mr. Bush's Jack Bauer is no more persuasive than his Tom Cruise of "Top Gun." By crying wolf about terrorism way too often, usually when a distraction is needed from bad news in Iraq, he and his administration have long since become comedy fodder, and not just on "The Daily Show." June's scenario was particularly choice: as Baghdad imploded, Alberto Gonzales breathlessly unmasked a Miami terror cell plotting a "full ground war" and the destruction of the Sears Tower, even though the alleged cell had no concrete plans, no contacts with terrorist networks and no equipment, including boots.

What makes the foiled London-Pakistan plot seem more of a serious threat - though not so serious it disrupted Tony Blair's vacation - is that the British vouched for it, not Attorney General Gonzales and his Keystone Kops. This didn't stop Michael Chertoff from grabbing credit in his promotional sprint through last Sunday's talk shows. "It was as if we had an opportunity to stop 9/11 before it actually was carried out," he said, insinuating himself into that royal we. But no matter how persistent his invocation of 9/11, our secretary of homeland security is too discredited to impress a public that has been plenty disillusioned since Karl Rove first exhibited the flag-draped remains of a World Trade Center victim in a 2004 campaign commercial. We look at Mr. Chertoff and still see the man who couldn't figure out what was happening in New Orleans when the catastrophe was being broadcast in real time on television.

"FIVE YEARS AFTER 9/11 FEAR FINALLY STRIKES OUT"

WAL-MART IS BECOMING THE POSTER CHILD OF ALL THAT IS WRONG WITH A GOP RUN GOVERNMENT

Invent a fake war to make Halliburton and your buddies richer. Give generous tax breaks to the richest of the rich, most of whom are your family, relatives or friends. Slash all benefits for the poor. Endorse the outsourcing of jobs abroad. Vote against a minimum wage increase, unless, of course, it is tied to one that would allow estate tax "relief" for most wealthy. Vote for legislation that allows for a steady flow of slave laborers to U.S. firms, with no hope of permanent residency or citizenship, and, naturally endorse slave labor in countries where American corporations have a vital interest. The Grand Old Party of Greed, Corruption, and Evil. They are anti-democratic, anti-intellectual, and worst of all, anti-American.

WAL-MART A MIRROR OF GOP ECONOMIC POLICY. From The Boston Globe.com LS

Excerpts:

WAL-MART is usefully becoming the symbol of an America where tens of millions of hard- working families cannot make ends meet.

Its wages and health benefits are so dismal that in several states Wal-Mart displaces worker healthcare costs onto tax-supported Medicaid for the poor. Wal-Mart batters down wages not just in the United States, but in Third World countries, where it plays foreign suppliers against one another to demand the lowest possible wholesale price (and wage).
The New York Times reported recently that Democratic politicians from Senator Joseph Lieberman to his winning opponent in the Connecticut primary, Ned Lamont, are making Wal-Mart their nemesis. This focus is certainly helpful in spotlighting one mega-employer that is symbol and substance of an America where the middle-class dream is vanishing, but the problems go far beyond Wal-Mart.


"MORE THAN JUST WAL-MART" By Robert Kuttner

CONSERVATIVES WITH A BRAIN RENOUNCE BUSH

Too bad it took mayhem, carnage and an unmitigated human catastrophe in Iraq, not to mention the Taliban's regrouping in Afghanistan because our military is stretched too thin, thanks to Bush's sick and twisted fixation on Iraq, for the brainier conservatives to wake up and smell the rotted corpses. Shame, shame, shame. LS

From The Washington Post.com by Mr. Peter Baker.

Excerpts:

Lowry's magazine offers a powerful example. "It is time to say it unequivocally: We are winning in Iraq," Lowry wrote in April 2005, chastising those who disagreed. This month, he published an editorial that concluded that "success in Iraq seems more out of reach than it has at any time since the initial invasion three years ago" and assailed "the administration's on-again-off-again approach to Iraq."

"It is time for the Bush administration to acknowledge that its approach of assuring people that progress is being made and operating on that optimistic basis in Iraq isn't working," the editorial said. Lowry followed up days later in his own column, suggesting that the United States is "losing, or at least not obviously winning, a major war" and asking whether Iraq is "Bush's Vietnam."

Quin Hillyer, executive editor of the American Spectator, cited Lowry's column in his own last week, writing that many are upset "because we seem not to be winning" and urging the White House to take on militia leaders such as Moqtada al-Sadr. Until it does, he said, "there will be no way for the administration to credibly claim that victory in Iraq is achievable, much less imminent."

Bush aides were bothered by a George F. Will column last week mocking neoconservative desires to transform the Middle East: "Foreign policy 'realists' considered Middle East stability the goal. The realists' critics, who regard realism as reprehensibly unambitious, considered stability the problem. That problem has been solved."

"PUNDITS RENOUNCE BUSH"